Monthly Archives: May 2011

Peter Saville on his album cover artwork

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Next month sees the release of Total, the first compilation to combine the back catalogues of Joy Division and New Order – who shared band members, a record label and a sleeve designer. Peter Saville was a co-founder of Factory Records and credits the label’s unique culture for providing him with a creative freedom on a par with its bands. “I had the opportunity to make the kind of objects I wanted to see in my life,” says Saville, who went on to design the England football strip, art direct adverts for Dior and was creative director of the city of Manchester. Here, he talks us through his favourite designs for Joy Division and New Order sleeves. [Source]

How The Government Has Merged With Corporations

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The 20th century was the bloodiest and most violent in human history. This led some countries to fascism – a system characterized by the state and large business becoming almost indistinguishable. The first decade of the 21st century suffers from that anti-democratic legacy. The government of the United States, for example, is largely rented to corporations. Big business sends multiple thousands of lobbyists to Washington, DC, to buy favors and get their point of view across in Congress and the executive branch: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the new war in Libya have been a boon to munitions manufacturers, “security” companies and private mercenary armies. They are part of a permanent war economy, making the US the world’s sheriff. [Source]

[via Matt Johnson]

Lionel Messi

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Later we would all say, “I was there. I saw it happen.” At the time, when he was brought on as a substitute, it was actually a welcome break, a chance for the first of the 35,000 spectators to hurry out of the stadium before the final whistle and beat the rush. It was October 16 2004 and there were still eight minutes left to play at the Olympic stadium in Barcelona. Barça were leading Espanyol 1-0 in the Catalan derby. Barcelona’s substitution was calculated to give them an extra half a minute’s dawdling time before securing their victory. The crowd munched sunflower seeds and murmured questions: “Who is this? What’s his name? Never heard of him … someone from the B team – what on earth…? A child!” [Source]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Secret Life of Hotels

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The Dominique Strauss-Kahn incident has incited lively conversations among industry colleagues as well as among most of my staff at a private company that supplies concierges to hotels, where many of us come from long histories as concierges in various NYC luxury properties. It has presented a new perspective on what we often shrugged off as nothing more than annoying guest behavior. Colleagues and staffers alike have shared stories. The guest who asks for a pack of cigarettes to be sent up to the room and receives us at the door fully naked. The guest who calls down “just to chat” and has porn blatantly blaring in the background. The guest who explicitly propositioned me to accompany him and his wife to a swingers party—the same party that I had earlier helped him find. Was this a criminal offense? Should I have gone to management to report harassment? But this man was not my boss. He was my guest, and it was my job to make the guests feel at home. [Source]


Interview with Francis Fukuyama

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We start with the news of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, which has just broken. “Isn’t that an amazing story?” Fukuyama says. “Even if it was an entrapment of some sort, the way he responded, if it’s even remotely true, it’s just unbelievable.” The food arrives quickly and I tuck into my excellent lamb while Fukuyama eats slowly as he thinks about his answers. (Later on he still has food in front of him long after I have finished but waves away the waiters who want to remove it.) Fukuyama is best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) in which he stated that liberal democracy was the only way to run a modern state. I get the impression that his support for democracy is now much more conditional than he thought then. [Source]


Lady Gaga takes tea with Mr Fry

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It takes quite a bit to excite the staff of The Lanesborough Hotel, one of London’s more self-consciously luxurious five-star residences. Princes, sultans, presidents, oligarchs and film stars have been coming here ever since the grand but oddly anonymous building on the corner of Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge arose from the ruins of Belgravia’s old St George’s Hospital some 20 years ago. I arrive there by taxi one Saturday night and find myself bundled through a tunnel of polite but harassed doormen into a lobby that, for all the discretion and professional sangfroid of the front-of-house staff, fails to suppress a crackle of excitement that fizzes around the interior like electricity. This, I imagine, must have been how the Goring Hotel felt when Kate Middleton came to stay the night before she was transformed into a royal duchess. I approach the desk, cough politely and murmur, as if it were the kind of remark I might drop into the ears of a concierge every day, “Hello. I’m here to see Lady Gaga.” [Source]


UPDATE! You can actually listen to a recording of the interview here.

China’s most expensive flat unveiled

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Just as the Chinese government is trying to rein in soaring house prices a real estate developer in Beijing has unveiled what Chinese media report is by far the most expensive apartment ever built in the country. The luxury penthouse apartment of more than 1,000 sq m is on sale for Rmb300,000 per sq m, or a total price tag of more than Rmb300m ($46.2m), according to an unnamed representative of the developer, quoted in Chinese media. Ironically, the luxury residence is located right next to the Diaoyutai State Guest House, the official compound in western Beijing where Madame Mao and the other members of the ultra-leftist “Gang of Four” established their headquarters during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). [Source]

Coca-Cola at the Design Museum

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To celebrate its 125th anniversary, Coca-Cola has just opened a new display on the history of its visual identity at the Design Museum in London. The exhibition fills the Design Museum’s glass tank and features some rarities from the Coke archives, commonly housed in a vault in the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. The display also shows that while differently shaped Coke bottles have come and gone, the brand’s visual identity has survived largely unchanged in 125 years. [Source]

Two Greenpeace ships confront world’s most controversial oil rig

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onfidential UK government documents acquired by Greenpeace and released today reveal that the British foreign office believes any oil spill in Arctic waters would be impossible to deal with. The rig’s destination, in a place known locally as iceberg alley in the freezing seas between Canada and Greenland, is a dangerous minefield of travelling icebergs – just one of the many reasons that drilling for oil here is a risky business. The company is planning to drill at depths of 1500m – as deep as the BP well that blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last year – but in far more challenging conditions. Freezing temperatures, severe weather and a highly remote location mean any spill could be very difficult – if not impossible – to contain and clean up. [Source]